This past weekend we headed to the White Mountains of New Hampshire for the 24 Hours of Great Glen mountain bike relay race. I had the pleasure of riding on a 5-person team with Spencer Taylor, Serena Taylor, Steffie Gould, and Simon Bird. Sarah and Celia filled in as our support crew.

In preparation for the 24 Hours of Great Glen mountain bike race next weekend I purchased a CygoLight MityCross 350-Lumen LED headlight (on sale for $170). It arrived on the FEDEX truck yesterday and I took it out for this evening (9-10:30pm) for my first-ever night mountain-ride. Having only ridden by day, night riding was quite a change, and definitely a blast. We received heavy rains yesterday, so the rolling limestone-ledge single-track of Battel Woods in Middlebury was moderately muddy with very slick rocks and roots. While I had a little (low-powered) flashlight as backup, the MityCross was the only light I used during the ride.

I mostly rode with the light on my helmet and battery in my CamelBack which worked great on all of the trails from super-twisty handle-bar-wide singletrack to wider double-track. I certainly had plenty of light to see and I was pleasently reminded of mogul-skiing advise: Stop looking at your feet, observe strategically. Lifting my head a bit and looking 15-20 feet down the trail (on single-track) rather than at my feet helped my speed pick up measurably. There were a couple of time while I was exploring some new single-track that I came around a large tree in a hairpin-turn to be surprised by a drop or climb that I wasn’t expecting, but I don’t think more light would have helped shine through an obstacle.

I tried one short stretch of double-track with the light on my bars and found that while the the depth-perceptions is much better (as everyone says), it was really distracting to have the light twitching back and forth as I dodged rocks. With the light on the bars I was able to cleanly bunny-hop a series of 3, 6, and 8-inch logs, whereas with the light on my head I miss-judged the big one and clipped it in the air with my tires — praise-be to 6″ of suspension travel.

Overall the MityCross 350 is plenty of light to get out into the woods and ride after dark. More light would always be nice, but I had a great hour and a half ride with just this light. My plan is to get a high-powered LED flashlight to complement this light and provide depth-perception on the handlebars, but the MityCross was more than enough to get started.

On my ride home after leaving the woods I tested the “throw” of the light by riding down my dark road as fast as I could. I found that the beam of the MittyCross allowed me to resolve details about 100ft (30yards/meters) ahead which made me comfortable riding up to ~20-25mph. Beyond that, the road seemed kind of dim and fuzzy and I had to really strain to see further. While adequate for a leisurely road ride (or as fast as I can get the mountain bike), I wouldn’t want to bomb down a hill at 50mph with only this light.